


the storm will turn to sun

by nosecoffee



Category: Once on this Island - Flaherty/Ahrens
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, I have made a few changes, Mild Sexual Content, Romance, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, duh - Freeform, i will not, if you look too closely, like she's thrown out before she tries to kill Daniel, no, spoilers for Once On This Island, whoops, will ever stop crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 12:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14955078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: un.She prays to the gods, begging them to tell her why she’s here.dix.He didn’t love her enough to leave it all behind.*a journey in ten parts





	the storm will turn to sun

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Forever Yours" from Once On This Island
> 
> I'm kinda obsessed

**un.**

Ti Moune does not know why the gods spared her. She does not know why Agwé’s waves swept her out of her mother’s tight arms and into the open branches of a high tree. Perhaps they had a plan for her. Perhaps they saw her scared little face and had pity. Perhaps it was an accident.

Of course, her name was not Ti Moune then, but she does not remember who she was before the flood. She does not remember who she was when she sat in the high branches Asaka set her in. Mama Euralie said that if Papa Ge meant her to die, she would be dead. Ti Moune considers herself blessed.

But she wonders why they saved her from the terrible flood that killed her people. She wonders why all that death had to happen, and why she was the only survivor. Ti Moune wonders if she has a purpose. She wonders if she must find that purpose herself, or whether it has not occurred, yet.

Ti Moune dreams, both in the day and the night, of being carried off in a grand homme’s car, in the passenger seat, next to the handsome stranger in white. She knows it can’t happen, she’s only a peasant, she’s barely worth enough for a peasant boy.

Still, she prays to the gods, begging them to tell her why she’s here.

 

**deux.**

His name is Daniel. She does not know that, yet, but it’s true. Ti Moune is dreaming, not daydreaming, but not asleep, when she’s walking down the road. It begins to rain, and rain hard, very suddenly, and she takes shelter under a tree. The rain is pelting down in such a way that it causes almost a river on the road, flowing down to the sea.

Ti Moune hears the screeching of tyres on the road. She turns in time to watch a grand silver car crash directly into a large tree, across the road. Ti Moune screams.

He is badly hurt. Very badly hurt. She screams louder for anyone to come and help. He will surely die. Ti Moune, upon realising no one is coming, races to the car and pries the door open, pulling the boy’s body from the smoking wreckage of his car.

The rain lessens, and Ti Moune is grateful. His body is limp and pliant. Blood blooms across the white of his shirt. _His skin is so pale._ “Can you see me?” She whispers to him, brushing a curl of hair out of his eyes. They flutter open. His eyes are grey, and they dart around his surroundings, slowly, lazily, like it’s too much effort. They are eyes from another world. They close again.

Ti Moune screams for help, again, shivering at the water running down her skin. The gods have given her a purpose. His name is Daniel.

 

**trois.**

Ti Moune feels the same fever he feels, differently, though. Sweat beads at his forehead, and he tosses and turns, crying out when his injuries twinge at his unconscious movements. She presses a wet rag to his skin, soothing and hushing him, holding his head in her lap, cleaning his wounds when enough time has gone by.

Mama Euralie insists that Papa Ge will come for him, that the gods are angry at her for disobeying them. Ti Moune, protests, she says that this boy, this Daniel, is her purpose. That the gods would not have saved her for no reason. If the gods meant him to die, he would be dead.

Mama Euralie does not care about Daniel. She begs Ti Moune to take a break, to sleep, to eat, to leave him for a minute. Ti Moune resists. Julian does not return. Daniel cries out in the night, and Ti Moune soothes him.

She dreams, in the day, and the night, without sleeping, that Daniel loves her. That each time he wakes he loves her even more. She dreams that he’ll take her to his home, that he’ll marry her. She dreams that once he makes his full recovery, he won’t leave her behind.

The other peasants insist that he will die, that he’s only just clinging to life. He won’t remember her, if he does recover. Ti Moune brushes off their remarks. Daniel will recover, and he will love her.

 

**quatre.**

Maybe she dozed off. Maybe she’s never been more awake, but Ti Moune dreams he wakes. Daniel wakes, draped over her lap. She dreams he turns onto his stomach and sits up, weight on his wrists, settled on the heels of his feet. His open shirt flutters like curtains in the wind. In his grey eyes she sees all the love she feels for him.

She was asleep. When she wakes, there is a shadow standing over them. The shadow is dirty, dried blood and mud and charcoal clinging to its legs and arms and stomach. The shadow wears a skull on its head, like a crown. The shadow holds a staff in its hand. The shadow’s eyes glow in the darkness.

The shadow is Papa Ge. The demon came, just as everyone said. Tonight, it wears the form of a woman, a woman with ripped clothes and a dangerous look on her face. She calls Ti Moune an arrogant fool. She tells her she cannot hold back death. Daniel arches off her lap, led by his chest, shirt fluttering like palm fronds in a storm.

Ti Moune makes a choice. Papa Ge meant him to die, but Ti Moune will not allow this. Ti Moune loves him, just as Erzulie meant her to. Ti Moune trades her life for his, begging Papa Ge to let her lead him back to health before she follows through with her promise. “I would die for him.” She hisses at the demon, her fingers twisted in the material at his shoulders. She coaxes him back onto his back, head turned onto her thigh.

At first the demon is shocked, confused. And then she grins like death. Ti Moune says she is not afraid, and she isn’t, but her heart races in her chest like a hummingbird. Her life is forever Papa Ge’s, but she gave it for Daniel. And that is all that matters.

 

**cinq.**

Ti Moune wants to scream when they carry Daniel away from her. He is hers, did they not know? Their lives are now hopelessly intertwined. They should not be separated. Don’t they know it is her purpose to guide him back to life?

Still, they leave, with him in tow, her Daniel. Ti Moune makes another choice. She leaves. Tonton Julian fights, he says she must stay. Mama Euralie protests, frustrated, saying that Daniel doesn’t need her, he doesn’t love her. Ti Moune does not listen. She leaves the village behind her, her work-roughened feet on the road, nothing but her and the island.

Not true. Asaka gives her shelter from rain, gives her food when she is hungry, and gives her company in the form of birds and other animals when she is lonely. Ti Moune has never spoken to a god outside of prayer before. And though she knows Asaka is there, she never sees her. Ti Moune speaks as though she is beside her, though. She asks questions she knows will never be answered. She speaks of frivolous things.

It does not matter. Ti Moune is going to her Daniel, to heal him, to love him, to marry him. For they will have to let her marry him, once she has saved him, properly.

Ti Moune journeys to the city, without a backward glance. She cannot look back, or she’ll lose her bravery.

 

**six.**

Ti Moune travels through the city in a daze. Maybe people laughed at her, maybe they ignored her. She travels up to the Hotel Beauxhomme and perhaps the guard understands, perhaps he has heard stories of what happened to Daniel, perhaps the gods see this is a test she will never pass in a thousand years, but the guard opens the gate for her without a word.

Ti Moune does not know how she finds him, how she finds herself standing in his room, above his lovely bed. Maybe she scrubbed floors in the hotel, until someone finally let slip where Daniel rested. Maybe she climbed to his window from the garden below like a lover from a story long ago, or maybe the gods saw she was weak from her journey and helped her to his room.

Either way, she nearly collapses by his side when she finds him. He is bathed in pale moonlight, almost as pale as his skin and clothes and bedsheets. Everything in the city is pale and clean. So different from the village where you can’t escape the dirt. Ti Moune gazes at the face she had missed these last days, the face she had memorised by sunlight and moonlight alike. She nearly cries.

Ti Moune goes to her knees beside his bed and takes his hand in hers. It is warm and a bit clammy, but she is just glad it isn’t cold. “Hello.” Says a voice above her and Ti Moune looks up, quickly. It’s Daniel, grey eyes open wide, a small smile on his face. Recognition flickers in his eyes. “I remember you. Ti Moune.”

“Oh, Daniel.” She sighs, in relief. He sits up and ushers her up onto the bed. His arms are warm and firm around her, his chest solid against her, the bed soft beneath her. Ti Moune feels complete in his embrace. Erzulie is surely smiling on them, now, for her to feel so safe and happy. “I’ll never leave you.”

 

**sept.**

Ti Moune knows people whisper about them. No one outright questions her, but she knows they stare. She focuses on helping Daniel walk along the halls. He says he’ll soon be dancing. She knows better. He catches her around the waist and spins her around. Her skirt flies out around her, and Ti Moune laughs, because her heart is so full of love for him. Yes, he’ll soon be dancing. They’ll dance, together.

His bed is where they sleep. His bed is where she kisses him. His bed is where she drapes herself, gently, over him, and kisses down his pale throat, where she unbuttons his shirt, where she loves him. The stronger he gets, the more she finds he leads their kisses. Daniel drapes himself over her, more and more. His hands have more strength in them than she thought possible, and when he holds her, when he gathers her skirt up around her hips, when he fits his body between her legs, Ti Moune knows he loves her. How could a thing like that be anything but love?

No one would approve, she thinks. No one would understand. And it’s not fair. She hears them whisper, she sees them stare. Ti Moune bows her head, she does not speak, except to Daniel. She does not dance, except for Daniel. They just don’t understand, yet. Soon they’ll come to their senses and realise she was intended for him, she is all he will ever need. Because his life is hers, same as hers is his, and had been since she pulled him from that car. Had been since the gods fished her from the raging floods and placed her, safe, in a tree, just for him.

Ti Moune wakes, one night. Daniel is not with her. The door to his bedroom is propped open, and a beam of golden light is spilled on the floor. She can hear people talking outside the room. One of the voices is Daniel. The other is the grand homme that is his father. His father says, “How long do you think you can play this game?” Daniel spits back something in French and slams the door closed behind him, when he reenters the room.

She reaches out to him. She wants to soothe him, she wants to calm his rage. Daniel takes her hands in his own. “Will you kiss me, Ti Moune?” He asks, and she nods. She kisses him, and pulls back the covers so he can sit beside her, his back to the headboard. Ti Moune climbs onto his lap, and kisses him with all the love in her heart. _This is no game,_ she thinks, as her fingers undo the buttons at his throat, at his collarbone, down his ribs. _This is no game, grand homme. This is love._

 

**huit.**

Ti Moune finds that he is as pale all over his body as he is at his throat. She thinks they must be very different, for she is just as dark all over her body as she is at her throat. His shoulders are freckled, and his cheeks are pink, and his hair is dark, but the rest of him is pale.

She finds that he sparkles in the light when she undresses him and has him in her arms. She's too preoccupied, at the time she finds this, to ask him if she is the same. Ti Moune wants to know their similarities, and their differences, just as she's sure he wants to know them. And she asks him when her heart stops racing, her fingers running rampant in his dark curls, his head resting on her stomach. She is warm in every place he touches her.

“What do I look like, to you?” Ti Moune asks, in the silence, seemingly to the night itself. Daniel props his head up on the back of his hand, resting just below her belly button. His eyes seem to shine in the darkness, and Ti Moune does not have the sense to fear that.

“Perfect.” He says. He says it in that way that he often does right before they sleep. His words slightly mumbled, slurred, thick in his teeth. As if it takes effort to say it, but he wants to make the effort. “You are the river, the moon, the stars. You're no one else I've known. You're so different, but you're perfect for that reason.”

And then he says something strange. His eyes flutter closed, and he kisses her belly. Ti Moune almost thinks he has fallen asleep when he says, “Some girls you marry, some you love.” She wonders what this means as he sleeps, unable to do so, herself. The sweat on her body cools off until the breeze off of his balcony makes her shiver. Ti Moune ignores this, as she pulls a blanket up, over her head, one hand in his hair.

 

**neuf.**

“Many thanks, for what you've given Daniel, but do not be misled.” Andrea says, and Ti Moune senses something is off. Why is Daniel standing so close to this girl? Why is he reaching for her. Why does Andrea lean into the touch before it is there, for her? Why does she do this, as if she knows it is coming? “My dear mademoiselle, you dance so very well. I pray you'll dance for Daniel and for me...when we are wed.”

The words don't make sense to her. Ti Moune’s heart is still racing in her chest from when she danced, but now she thinks it must be racing for some other reason. _When we are wed._ Andrea and Daniel? Wed? No. That cannot be true. For Ti Moune will be the one to marry Daniel, not this girl in the fine dress, with the pale skin, and the fancy way of talking. No, not Andrea, surely not Andrea.

“Andrea and I have been promised to each other since we were children.” Daniel explains, seeing her confusion, seeing her outright denial. He reaches for her, breaking away from Andrea who is wearing the most curious expression; a mix of sadness and anger. Ti Moune prays the anger is not aimed at her. “There will always be a place for you, here, Ti Moune.”

Ti Moune knows what he means. She looks at Andrea, and sees that she accepts this as readily as she accepted Ti Moune’s love for Daniel. But Ti Moune cannot be the other woman. She loves him too much to share him, to be the one hidden away, the one left only for his bed. She cannot be the one that he loves while he marries Andrea, only because he's supposed to. It's not right. What he's saying is not right.

“I thought you understood.” Daniel says, giving her look he has never given her before. A look that says she should stop making a scene, stop protesting and denying. She's making him look bad. By insisting he run away with her, she is making him look the fool. She is acting like a madwoman. And then he says something that makes her blood freeze in her veins. “We could never marry.”

 

**dix.**

Papa Ge appears to her, again, in the same form. Dirty, and covered in shadows and blood. The silver coin in Ti Moune’s hand burns at her skin like a brand. Daniel didn’t want her. After all she did for him. She saved him, she healed him, she gave her life to keep him alive. And yet, he didn’t love her enough to leave it all behind.

“There were promises made in the darkness.” Papa Ge whispers. Ti Moune shivers. “Promises made in your sleep.” To think all she’d done for him was all for nothing, now that he was married to Andrea. Andrea, who had been sorry. Andrea, who had been angry that Daniel had neglected to tell Ti Moune of his future. “Promises the gods demand you keep!”

Of course. Ti Moune had traded her soul for his. Now it was time to pay up. “You gave him love, love he would soon betray.” It was true. She had given him everything. Her heart, her mind, her body, her trust. And all he had given her in return was a silver coin. “You gave him life. I am the price you pay.”

So this is where the road ends, for her? Not in a flood with her mother, not in a car wreck on a watery road. But here, at the hands of Papa Ge, after saving a boy she didn’t know? Ti Moune was so foolish to believe that a grand homme would love her. “You saved him. You loved him. And he betrayed you.” The demon’s whispers are so much more soothing than before. Now that she is whispering what Ti Moune knows to be true. “Why should you die for him, now?” Yes, why? Why, when he would never know what she had done? “Kill him Ti Moune.”

Ti Moune shakes out of her trance, jumping away from the demon draped over her. Kill Daniel? The man she loves? _Kill_ Daniel? With his eyes as grey as the sky in a storm, with his skin as pale as clean sheets, with his voice as smooth as velvet? “Prove that death is stronger than love!” Papa Ge cries, shaking her staff, a grin stretching her mouth open over sharp yellow teeth. Teeth of a feral, merciless animal. Kill _Daniel?_ “And you can have your own life, again.” Kill Daniel.

 

 

She cannot do it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. If you liked this, please consider leaving a me a comment all about that, and/or a kudos, if you like. Hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee, we can chat about this how and why I cry. Again, thank you, I hope you enjoyed this.


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